No black hats here
In essence, peer-to-peer networks provide a way to link PCs together without the need for powerful central computers, known as servers.
Software developers have come to see peer-to-peer architecture as a revolutionary way to store and search for any data in a network, including on the Internet. Despite legal clouds over Napster, peer-to-peer projects remain a magnet for developers and capital.
Start-up OpenCola, for example, recently received a US$3 million investment infusion from Mosaic Venture Partners, Angel Investors and Torsar. Groove Networks, a system being developed by Lotus founder Ray Ozzie, just announced that it has signed its 100th development partner.
Many of these companies are using this week's peer-to-peer conference, sponsored by publishers O'Reilly & Associates, as launching pads for services they've been working on for the last year.
These range from companies such as NextPage, which already marks several big law and investment firms among clients of its document-sharing service, to new companies such as Thinkstream, which is demonstrating its distributed e-commerce technology for the first time.
These developers are seeking to avoid legal land mines as they work to create networks that would respect copyright holders by incorporating security features or serve markets that go beyond music services, such as collaborative research. They're joining companies that have seen peer-to-peer applications already implemented in unlikely places with no hint of legal troubles.
Software maker Billpoint, for example, has lined up customers such as online auction house eBay for its person-to-person credit card payment system. The network allows customers to pay each other directly, whether they are in American Samoa, Iceland or 35 other countries across the world.
DataSynapse, meanwhile, is among a host of companies hoping to take distributed computing a step beyond file sharing, using peer-to-peer architecture to link individual PCs into a virtual supercomputer and harness unused processing power.
